Four cobot welding cells at an Ohio fabricator
Sheet metal fabrication and contract manufacturing · Welding · Vendor published
This account comes from a robot maker, integrator, or their marketing partner. Treat every performance and payback figure as advertising until an engineer verifies it against your own job.
The job
Raymath, an Ohio metal fabricator, could not hire enough welders to keep up with demand, so it moved repetitive MIG work onto cobot welding cells and later added a cobot TIG system for aluminum parts with difficult angles. Welders now set up and supervise cells instead of hand welding every part, and one operator can run more than one cell at a time.
The shop
Headcount not published; a multi department contract fabricator that also automated CNC machine tending in the same period.
The equipment
Four Universal Robots cobot MIG welding cells supplied by THG Automation, plus a THG cobot TIG welding system with cold wire feed. The same shop runs ProCobots ProFeeder machine tending cells on two Hurco CNCs.
The published numbers
Payload: not published. Rate: welding productivity up 200 percent, described as up to 4X when one operator runs multiple cells, a vendor claim; one aluminum part fell from 15 minutes to 5 or 6 minutes, and another from 3 to 4 minutes to 30 or 40 seconds, published-by-vendor; the shop also cites a more than 600 percent machining productivity gain on the tending side, a vendor claim. Cost: not published. Payback: under 12 months, a vendor claim.
Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.
What we would check before believing it applies to you
The lesson is staffing leverage, not welder replacement: the gains come from experienced welders running multiple cells, so a shop should plan who programs, fixtures, and inspects before pricing hardware. Cobot welding pays off on parts with enough repeat volume to amortize fixturing; a pure one-off job shop should test its actual part mix against programming time per new part. TIG on aluminum is the hard end of the spectrum, so treat that result as an advanced outcome, not a starting point. Verify your power supply, gas, and fume extraction plans alongside the robot, and remember that an open cobot welding cell still requires arc glare, fume, and reach hazards to be covered in the risk assessment.
Sources
Is your job like this one?
Tell Joe what you are running. He will give you a straight preliminary read, and he will tell you if a robot is the wrong answer for your situation.
Read the welding guide